You know, with a title like “God Is Dead”, you inevitably have a certain level of expectation for how badass this comic should be. Compound that with the fact that Jonathan Hickman’s name is on the cover and you kind of expect a great comic regardless of the premise, right? Well… sigh. Here we go.
Written by Jonathan Hickman & Mike Costa
Illustrated by Di Amorim
Like a thunderbolt from heaven, the epic launch issue of GOD IS DEAD is here! East of West and Fantastic Four author JONATHAN HICKMAN launches a fierce new series that stomps where others fear to tread. Mankind has argued over the existence of gods since the dawn of time. In modern eras it’s been fashionable to mock religious believers with taunts of scientific testimony and fact. But when the gods of old begin to reappear on earth and claim the domain of man for their own, the world is thrown into a state of utter anarchy. Now Horus walks the streets of Egypt, Zeus has taken over the Sistine Chapel, and Odin is coordinating the dissection of the earth among the returned deities. Mankind held sway over the world for thousands of years and their hubris over that time has made them powerful but when faced with the divine, can mortal weapons put an end to the second coming of the gods?
Well, normally, I would start by giving a brief overview of the premise of the issue, but it seems that Avatar’s solicitation not only covers that, it also covers pretty much everything that happens in the issue. Anyway, let’s get down to it: “God Is Dead” does not feel like a Jonathan Hickman comic. Now, that isn’t to say that there is a strict set of criteria Hickman must fill out when writing, but with his work over the past year he has garnered something of a reputation. His writing has generally been characterised by fleshed-out, fully realised characters that feel distinct and, most importantly, human as they play off of grand, epic scale events. When you look at the concept of “God Is Dead”, you can definitely see Hickman’s hand in it, but with the finished product it feels positively… ordinary.
The first thing you might notice about “God Is Dead”, though, is that Hickman is sharing the writing credit with Mike Costa. Now, far be it from me to point fingers as I have no real insight into the creative process of the book. However, it feels like this is where the dilution of the Hickman-ness of the book stems from. Nothing in the book really impresses the way it should. Even when you have sequences that involve the Gods returning to Earth, like Zeus walking into Sistene Chapel of all places, it just feels so lackluster. Perhaps Hickman’s name and reputation created a false sense of expectation for the book yet even looking at it as a story on it’s own, it doesn’t live up to it’s own concept. The characters of the story are hastily introduced after eleven pages of set-up to the story and are given only four pages to work with. This leaves the reader completely disconnected to the human element of the story, which is key to a story about Gods, which is where the book ultimately fails because the reader is given no reason to care about any of these people. When there are no human stakes to a book with this kind of scope, it feels empty and disconnected and that’s exactly the feeling this issue leaves.
While the writing feels empty and disconnected from the human element, the art isn’t anything to write home about either. Di Amorim draws the issue in what can only be described as “Avatar House Style”; vaguely photo-realistic with dark inks and washed out, earth colours that only serve to make the comic look dull. There’s no life to the style, even when Amorim is rendering the golden halls of Valhalla. Again, everything feels so positively normal which makes you forget that this is a book about Gods returning to Earth. Even the opening pages showcasing natural disasters all over the world fail to impress as, again, there’s no presented reason as to why the reader should care. It’s also worth noting that the issue opens with what, presumably, should be a splash page, but leaves two thirds of the page as black panels. That’s honestly just poor management of page space and leaves a feeling of unprofessionalism from the first page. Even Avatar’s penchant for gore and nudity is absent here. There are two instances of on-panel violence and one instance of on-panel nudity which, while their restraint is admirable, means the issue can’t even fall back on schlock-y exploitation when the story fails to impress.
Honestly, there’s not a whole lot to say about this issue. Not only is it a disappointment considering Hickman’s current work at other publishers, it’s a disappointment that they charged $3.99 for this. The issue feels almost half finished with how little content there is to work with here. There are no interesting characters present because the half dozen human characters that do appear feel little more than cardboard cutouts. Not only is there no sense of Hickman’s characteristic writing that brings out fully realised characters in a few lines of dialogue, there’s no sense of any character whatsoever. This is just disappointing because not only am I personally a huge fan of Hickman’s work, I honestly hoped that this would be a good series that would allow him to perhaps tell a story that wouldn’t be found anywhere else. As it turns out, there was no story to be found here either.
Final Verdict: 3.0 – Just don’t bother.
